Casinos and hotels consider enhancing overall customer experience to be critical for running their businesses, including tracking customer spending/play habits (in their shops and restaurants, and on the casino's games), administering customer loyalty programs, and managing the hotel's services including guest room door locks, parking garage uses, and room charge functions. To help accomplish these goals, among many other technologies, procedures and systems, hotels typically utilize electronic tracking systems including credit cards, guest room cards, and card reader systems, and most casinos utilize electronic tracking systems typically referred to as Player Tracking Systems (PTSs).
A casino's PTS captures customer game play and spending information, offering customers the ability to earn points based on their level of play/spending, and casinos the ability to institute customer/player Rewards Programs (RPs). The captured data can also be utilized for many other purposes including: developing marketing promotions, producing reports analyzing usage flow and trends, customer history/preferences/habits. Casinos and customers/players both benefit from PTSs and consider the systems valuable.
In order for a customer to begin earning points they must first join a casino's RP. To do this, the customer typically provides to the casino basic contact and preference information which is used to establish a customer/player account. Once established, the customer is given a unique player tracking card (PTC) which they can utilize whenever playing games, making purchases within the casino to earn points. Earned points (stored in their account) can later be redeemed for items such as room upgrades, free dinners or game play. PTCs are typically just simple plastic cards containing magnetic strips (nearly identical in design to common credit cards).
Some systems even allow customers/players to deposit cash into their accounts—much like a bank account—and debit/credit the balance as part of ongoing game play. This capability, usually referred to as Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), allows players to play slot machines for example without requiring them to continually insert cash before placing bets, or physically collect any coins paid out from winnings, and generally makes the process of moving from game-to-game more convenient and efficient. Casino's benefit from EFT in a number of ways as well.
Additionally, PTSs make it possible to collect player preference information (e.g. specific games or game types, average bet data) and use it to tailor players' experiences. This capability becomes particularly valuable with the anticipated emergence of downloadable games (where games can be dynamically loaded from a centralized game server onto individual gaming machines as needed). In this environment, a customized set of games, for example, could automatically be offered to a player based on the player's historical preference.
Using the tracking of an individual's slot machine play to illustrate, the player inserts the player's PTC into a card reader (typically located on the front face of the machine) prior to beginning game play. This action, in effect “logs” the player into the PTS. Then during game-play, relevant data is captured and stored on a centralized data-server (and the player's account in particular) typically located in a casino's backroom operations area. When the player has finished play on a particular machine, by removing the PTC, the player indicates to the PTS that the player wishes to be “logged-off”.
By giving individuals PTCs to use, the process of identifying them to a PTS is simplified (much like when individuals use bank cards at an ATM). Once inserted into a card reader, information is read from a PTC and transmitted back to the centralized server where the player's account and other logging databases are accessed, updated, as needed. For example, typical data captured/stored in a game log history might include the title, bet information, number of plays, and outcome for each game played.
Player tracking is usually implemented in slot machines via a separate hardware/software component often referred to as the player tracking hardware. This component generally includes a simple computer board, a card reader, some type of display means, and various ports allowing for electronic interface to the backend system's network (a computerized network on which any participating gaming devices and the centralized databases reside), as well as to local gamine device electronics.
In addition to its use with slot machines, a PTS often utilizes other options for accepting PTC information. At a table game, for example, this may be a simple keyboard at which the individual managing the table (usually the dealer) can enter a player's card data. For a shop within a casino, it may be a small device located at the checkout counter that can read PTCs. All of the given devices, however, are designed to accomplish one primary task—to capture, and make available to the casino, a customer's habits (game-play, store/restaurant spending, etc.).
There are a number of inherent problems with current PTSs, however. One is their reliance on customers/players to use their PTCs. A PTS is worthless if customers/players do not use their PTCs. And even when they do use them, certain types of information still are not captured when using today's technology (e.g. how may customers stopped to look at a game but chose not to play it). And finally, because the effort to physically retrieve a card (from a purse or wallet), insert it into a machine, and then importantly, remember to remove it when finished, all represent some level of hassle to many customers/players, there is often a reluctance to use PTCs in many situations.
Therefore, the ability to replace PTCs with a more user-friendly and powerful alternative could significantly benefit both customers/players and casinos. And the ability to utilize this alternative technology for services far beyond simple player tracking would be more valuable yet.